US 5th Special Forces Group

The 5th Special Forces Group is a US Army special forces group which was activated on 21 September 1961. In February 1965, it was deployed as a mainstay battle force during the Vietnam War, using both conventional and unconventional warfare; they were some of the last US soldiers pulled out of Vietnam. Members of the unit continued to conduct intelligence operations in Southeast Asia until the collapse of South Vietnam on 29 April 1975. The 5th SFG later took part in the Gulf War and in the Somali Civil War, and it played a major role in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595 and 555, both 12-man teams, were flown into Afghanistan from the Karshi-Khanabad Airbase in Uzbekistan on 19 October 2001 and given 21 days to assist Abdul Rashid Dostum's Northern Alliance forces in taking Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban. The two ODA teams rode on horseback, assisting Dostum's 200 paid soldiers (plus an undetermined number of part-time militia) against 50,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters with missiles, armor, rockets, mortars, and machine guns. Against all odds, the ODA teams utilized close air support to assist the Northern Alliance forces, and they led the (as of 2018) last cavalry charge of the US Army when they charged the Taliban at Cobaki on 22 October. On 6 November, Mazar-i-Sharif fell, and the members of the ODA teams were decorated for the success of their mission. During the Iraq War, the group assisted with the capture of Saddam Hussein.